President Eric Barron e-mailed Penn State’s faculty and staff yesterday to announce the creation of a sexual assault and harassment task force as well as a health care advisory committee.

The e-mail came just a few days after data showed Penn State recorded the most reported on-campus forcible sexual incidents in America. Barron wrote that he is confident Penn State’s Title IX compliance is up to snuff, but he does “not believe that we should be satisfied with compliance – instead we should become a true leader in the prevention of sexual assault and in investigating and adjudicating student-on-student sexual assault cases while best protecting the wishes, and where appropriate and possible, the confidentiality of the survivors.”

Barron charged the committee “to collect, review and provide an evaluation of Penn State’s activities relating to sexual assault and other forms of sexual or gender-based harassment.”

The issue of campus sexual assault has received concentrated attention recently, from twodifferent angles. It’s hard to pin down an accurate statistic of just how frequent campus sexual incidents are (depending on how you interpret statistics, anywhere from 5 to 25 percent of college women are victims of attempted or completed assault), but there’s no question they are underreported.

The second part of Barron’s e-mail handled health care, as graduate students recently got smacked with rising premiums despite their opposition. Graduate student Alison Franklin of the Student Health Insurance Task Force will hold a seat, but Barron does not mention students in his reasoning for the committee’s necessitation so it’s unclear what part of health care this will focus on. Just before Barron’s e-mail was sent, the Graduate Student Association lettered now-committee chair David Grayasking for higher subsidies.

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Former Managing Editor of this site, now just makes lots of #content for it from the Phyrst’s Table 69. Senior from Philadelphia. First-generation Penn Stater. I might go to law school after this, but I might not, too. “For the Glory” is in my email signature because I’m a douche. [email protected] is my email if you want to tell me why I suck. Alternatively, you can call me out on Twitter @OlGilb.

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